Be­fore Hugh He­witt would an­swer my ques­tions, he had a con­di­tion: Through the pro­du­cer of The Hugh He­witt Show—his 15-year-old ra­dio pro­gram that touts 2 mil­lion weekly listen­ers—he in­formed me that I would need to first an­swer his ques­tions, on air.

Hours later, I was live on his show. “I got a note from my pro­du­cer today, as­so­ci­ate pro­du­cer Mar­lon, say­ing you want to meet up with me and do a pro­file on me, which I think is about as dull as pos­sible,” He­witt said, “but is that true?”

“That’s true,” I replied, “and he told me you only would chat with me if I chat­ted with you first.”

“That’s it,” He­witt said. “That’s my rule on pro­files, be­cause I al­ways want to get the re­cipro­city go­ing, be­cause we can now find you and play this tape end­lessly, and you answered two ques­tions straight that should ru­in your repu­ta­tion in journ­al­ism.”

The two ques­tions He­witt was re­fer­ring to are staples of his show, and he poses them to just about every first-time guest: Have you read The Loom­ing Tower, the 2006 book by New York­er writer Lawrence Wright about al-Qaida and Septem­ber 11? And second: Was Al­ger Hiss a So­viet spy?

This is de­cidedly not stand­ard con­ser­vat­ive ra­dio fare; but He­witt, a pro­fess­or of con­sti­tu­tion­al law who of­ten sounds the part, isn’t a con­ven­tion­al right-wing talk-ra­dio host (and he prefers the term “cen­ter-right” any­way). His pro­gram, which he has long called “Na­tion­al Pub­lic Ra­dio for con­ser­vat­ives,” is the brain­i­er cous­in of the shout-fests that blast out of many AM sta­tions.

On this par­tic­u­lar af­ter­noon, He­witt was feel­ing play­ful; two lla­mas were run­ning loose in Ari­zona, so the ver­sions of the ques­tions I got—”Have you read The Loom­ing Llama?” and “Was Al­ger Hiss a So­viet llama?”—were vari­ations on his typ­ic­al theme. (My an­swers: “I think that was stream­ing over the In­ter­net live this af­ter­noon” and “I think he was con­victed of per­jury; I’m not sure about his llama status.”) But, nor­mally, He­witt takes these two ques­tions quite ser­i­ously. “It’s a great re­veal to me. It tells me everything I need to know,” he says later, ex­plain­ing why he asks the Al­ger Hiss ques­tion. “I find out if some­body is know­ledge­able and hon­est. And if someone says I know who Hiss is and I don’t know wheth­er or not he was a spy, they are either very lazy or they’re not telling me the truth. And the reas­on they don’t want to tell me the truth is the Left hasn’t let go. They can’t let go of that.”

The day be­fore, He­witt had posed the real ver­sion of his Loom­ing Tower ques­tion to a far more in­flu­en­tial guest: Jeb Bush. (Bush said he had not read it, and He­witt re­spon­ded by telling him, “I think it’s the most im­port­ant book on the war.”) It was one in a series of ag­gress­ive but in­tel­lec­tu­al in­quir­ies he posed to the former gov­ernor; He­witt began the in­ter­view by ask­ing wheth­er Bush, if elec­ted, would be overly cau­tious about launch­ing a “third Bush war.” (“I wouldn’t,” Bush replied, and a cas­cade of head­lines fol­lowed.) He­witt fin­ished up with an even more poin­ted query: “Gov­ernor, what’s the mes­sage to the newly emer­ging demo­cra­cies that the world’s old­est demo­cracy keeps re­cyc­ling Bushes and Clin­tons and Clin­tons and Bushes? Does it send the wrong mes­sage to the Ni­geri­as and the In­di­as of the world about dyn­asty?”

These were hard-hit­ting ques­tions, but it was also easy to see why Bush had chosen to make He­witt’s show his first stop on the talk-ra­dio cir­cuit since he pub­licly began his nas­cent pres­id­en­tial cam­paign. While oth­er talk-ra­dio per­son­al­it­ies like Laura In­gra­ham and Rush Limbaugh have been tear­ing Bush limb from limb (In­gra­ham: “Jeb and Hil­lary could run on the same tick­et”; Limbaugh: “That tick­et would be a mod­er­ate wet dream”), the back and forth with He­witt was guar­an­teed to be high-minded. “He is tough but fair, as they say,” notes Tim Miller, a seni­or ad­viser for Bush’s PAC, ex­plain­ing the reas­on­ing be­hind de­b­ut­ing Bush on He­witt’s show.

In 2005, The New York­er be­stowed upon He­witt—who, in ad­di­tion to be­ing a na­tion­ally syn­dic­ated ra­dio host, has au­thored more than a dozen books and is a weekly colum­nist for both The Wash­ing­ton Ex­am­iner and Town­hall.com—the title of “Most Fam­ous Con­ser­vat­ive Journ­al­ist Whom Lib­er­als Have Nev­er Heard Of.” But to the ex­tent that this is still true today, it won’t be the case for long. The day be­fore the Bush in­ter­view, Salem Me­dia Group, the con­ser­vat­ive com­pany that pro­duces He­witt’s pro­gram, had an­nounced a part­ner­ship with CNN on three Re­pub­lic­an pres­id­en­tial de­bates this fall. And they named He­witt as the first con­ser­vat­ive fig­ure who will get to ask ques­tions of the can­did­ates.

His se­lec­tion was widely praised, in­side the party and out. “This. Is. Awe­some,” GOP strategist Rick Wilson tweeted. McKay Cop­pins, a seni­or polit­ic­al writer at BuzzFeed, pre­dicted on Twit­ter that He­witt “is prob­ably the most likely to ask a de­bate ques­tion that knocks a can­did­ate out of the race.”

One month earli­er, He­witt had notched an­oth­er big achieve­ment by break­ing one of the biggest polit­ic­al stor­ies of the year: that Mitt Rom­ney wouldn’t be run­ning for pres­id­ent. He­witt not only was the first to defin­it­ively re­port that Rom­ney was out—con­tra­dict­ing in­ac­cur­ate re­ports from The Daily Beast and Bloomberg—but he had the full script of what Rom­ney was about to tell his top sup­port­ers.

Hugh He­witt, in short, is hav­ing a mo­ment. He is not the most-heard talk-ra­dio host, not by a long shot, with an audi­ence one-tenth the size of Rush Limbaugh or Sean Han­nity, ac­cord­ing to Talk­ers, an in­dustry trade magazine. Yet, as the 2016 cycle gets un­der­way, he ap­pears to be emer­ging as the pre­ferred pun­dit of the Re­pub­lic­an es­tab­lish­ment—a sort of bridge between the con­ser­vat­ive grass­roots and elite Belt­way polit­ics. After my ap­pear­ance on his show, He­witt agreed to talk to me about his perch—and, as luck would have it, he was com­ing to Wash­ing­ton that very week­end: He’d just been booked for Meet the Press.

HE­WITT, 59, AR­RIVES a few minutes early to the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton. He had been up­stairs tak­ing a planned mid-morn­ing nap after a red-eye flight to Wash­ing­ton from South­ern Cali­for­nia, where he re­cords his show. He is wear­ing thick-rimmed glasses, a sim­il­ar cut to the style Rick Perry has been sport­ing of late, a blue sweat­er, a full head of white hair, and the de­mean­or of a friendly aca­dem­ic.

“There are two kinds of people in our busi­ness,” He­witt says of the talk-ra­dio world. “There are people in our busi­ness who came out of the disc-jockey side who have no dis­cern­ible ideo­logy. They’re there for rat­ings. “… And then there are people who came out of the side of the busi­ness where they be­lieve things and they en­joy talk­ing about them.”

He­witt is firmly in the lat­ter camp: He sees ra­dio journ­al­ism as a means to a polit­ic­al end. He talks about “my busi­ness, my pas­sion—which is to build a bet­ter Amer­ica us­ing my plat­forms as a means of do­ing that, im­pact­ing polit­ics in the right way.” He was an out­spoken Rom­ney back­er in 2008 and 2012, but this cycle, he says, “I have no dog in this hunt.” In­stead, he has cul­tiv­ated friend­ships in nearly every cam­paign, if not with every prin­cip­al. When Sen. Ted Cruz came to Los Angeles to meet with a group of Rom­ney bund­lers last year, it was He­witt who mod­er­ated the event. “Rick San­tor­um, he trusts me. I think Rand Paul trusts me. Ted trusts me. Scott Walk­er I’ve sat down with a num­ber of times. [John] Kasich is a friend,” He­witt says. “But I’ll ask them the toughest ques­tion I know how to ask.”

He gets the chance be­cause al­most all of them ap­pear on his show. In the last week or so, he’d had Bush on, plus Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Don­ald Trump had stopped by and He­witt had asked about his read­ing habits, eli­cit­ing a tongue-twist­ing an­swer that began, “Well, I read a lot,” and ended with, “I just don’t get to read very much.” Says He­witt, “I have cred­ib­il­ity with just about every­one that I’m not go­ing to blow them up”—at least not un­fairly. Or, as Re­pub­lic­an Na­tion­al Com­mit­tee Chair­man Re­ince Priebus puts it, “It goes down to trust.”

But it’s not only con­ser­vat­ives who seem to trust him. When Dav­id Axel­rod, Pres­id­ent Obama’s long­time chief strategist, went on the pub­li­city cir­cuit to pro­mote his re­cent book, his first con­ser­vat­ive talk-ra­dio stop was with He­witt. (Fox’s Bill O’Re­illy was Axel­rod’s first con­ser­vat­ive TV ap­pear­ance.) “Let’s be hon­est—and this isn’t lim­ited to talk ra­dio on the Right—there are those for whom the an­swers are just in­ter­ludes for them to catch their breath between ques­tions. I think he asks ques­tions genu­inely in pur­suit of an­swers,” Axel­rod told me. “We live in a time where it is very hard for people to reach across the chasm and make con­nec­tions with folks on the oth­er side and treat each oth­er like people, and I felt like Hugh did.” Axel­rod stayed on the show for more than an hour.

He­witt—who grew up in War­ren, Ohio—may be com­fort­able with lib­er­als in part be­cause he has been sur­roun­ded by them since his col­lege days at Har­vard, where his room­mates in­cluded Mark Gear­an, who would go on to serve as Pres­id­ent Clin­ton’s com­mu­nic­a­tions dir­ect­or, and Dan Pone­man, who served as deputy En­ergy sec­ret­ary un­der Pres­id­ent Obama. “If you’ve got lefties in your life, you’re not go­ing to hate lib­er­als,” He­witt says. “They’re just people. They’re just wrong.”

He ar­rived at Har­vard three weeks after Richard Nix­on’s resig­na­tion, a tough time to be a young Re­pub­lic­an if ever there was one. “A col­lege Re­pub­lic­an was like a curi­os­ity,” Pone­man re­calls. “He was just the way he is now. He was un­abashed; he was bold; he was smart.” (Fun fact: Their ad­viser as un­der­grads was then-grad-stu­dent Alan Keyes, the Re­pub­lic­an whom Obama beat to win his Sen­ate seat in 2004.)

Gear­an, whom He­witt called “my closest friend in the world,” says he would use He­witt as a con­ser­vat­ive touch­stone dur­ing his days de­vel­op­ing mes­saging for the Clin­ton White House. “I would have a bead on where the Right was in my con­ver­sa­tions,” Gear­an says. “I don’t know that we’ve con­vinced each oth­er, but I have learned a lot.”

After col­lege, He­witt worked as an ed­it­or­i­al as­sist­ant for Richard Nix­on, help­ing him re­search his book The Real War. He­witt sub­sequently at­ten­ded law school at the Uni­versity of Michigan, where he was class­mates with Anne Gust, now the wife of Demo­crat­ic Cali­for­nia Gov. Jerry Brown. “I think Anne is among the smartest people I’ve ever met, and I’d like her to run for the U.S. Sen­ate. I might ac­tu­ally sup­port a Demo­crat, if Anne ran,” He­witt says. “And when Jerry steps down, I’d like Anne to run for gov­ernor be­cause she’s just so smart. She can run Cali­for­nia.” (For the re­cord, He­witt also says he hopes Con­doleezza Rice runs for statewide of­fice, to per­haps give the state’s woe­ful GOP a fight­ing chance.)

Fol­low­ing law school, He­witt went to clerk for the D.C. Cir­cuit, but the judge he was work­ing for fell ill, so he did brief stints with a series of oth­er judges: Robert Bork, Ant­on­in Scalia, and Ruth Bader Gins­burg, among them. He soon joined the Re­agan ad­min­is­tra­tion, where he worked in the White House coun­sel’s of­fice with a young law­yer named John Roberts, now chief justice of the Su­preme Court.

In 1989, he moved to Cali­for­nia to help Nix­on open his pres­id­en­tial lib­rary, serving as ex­ec­ut­ive dir­ect­or, be­fore trans­ition­ing in­to ra­dio and then co­host­ing a PBS show in Los Angeles. He launched The Hugh He­witt Show in the sum­mer of 2000.

Al­most since the start, his ra­dio pro­gram has fea­tured a reg­u­lar seg­ment with Er­win Chemer­insky, a lead­ing lib­er­al con­sti­tu­tion­al schol­ar. He­witt him­self is still fas­cin­ated by the law and is ac­tu­ally a prac­ti­cing law­yer (his area of ex­pert­ise: en­dangered-spe­cies law). “It’s far more sub­stant­ive and I think it’s far more soph­ist­ic­ated than most me­dia things I’ve ever been a part of,” says Chemer­insky, who typ­ic­ally ap­pears paired with a con­ser­vat­ive leg­al schol­ar. “He’s al­ways well pre­pared; he’s gen­i­al; he’s fair.”

“He’s a great voice for the Re­pub­lic­an Party to use from the per­spect­ive of the Re­pub­lic­an Party,” Chemer­insky adds. These days, the GOP lead­er­ship seems to agree.

IF RE­PUB­LIC­AN pun­dits fall on a scale from the bom­bast­ic right-wing­er Rush Limbaugh on one end to the civ­il­ized cent­rist Dav­id Brooks on the oth­er, then He­witt is Limbaugh-like in his ideo­logy but Brooks-like in his present­a­tion. In oth­er words, he’s an in­tel­lec­tu­al’s ideo­logue. “He sees him­self as a re­spons­ible al­tern­at­ive to so much of what’s out there,” Gear­an says. When I tell He­witt that one Re­pub­lic­an I spoke with called him a “gen­tle­man’s con­ser­vat­ive,” he smiles: “Oh, I like that.”

He­witt is pop­u­lar enough with the base to have hos­ted a na­tion­ally syn­dic­ated show for 15 years—and safe enough for the es­tab­lish­ment to thrust him in­to the de­bate spot­light this fall. In fact, it’s hard to find a He­witt hater any­where with­in the GOP. “Hugh’s hit­ting a peak,” says Dav­id Webb, a tea-party lead­er and now host of The Dav­id Webb Show on Siri­usXM. “He’s frankly gained the cred­ib­il­ity. It’s about do­ing what you do well, gain­ing the cred­ib­il­ity, and people come to you and say you have a voice and you have an audi­ence.”

He­witt is Limbaugh-like in his ideo­logy but Brooks-like in his present­a­tion.

He has a knack for land­ing on the most con­ser­vat­ive pos­sible po­s­i­tion a polit­ic­al prag­mat­ist could take. On im­mig­ra­tion, for in­stance, He­witt takes the same stance as those Re­pub­lic­ans who are con­cerned about per­man­ently ali­en­at­ing Latino voters: He’s for al­low­ing im­mig­rants who are in the coun­try il­leg­ally to stay, al­beit without cit­izen­ship or vot­ing rights. “We’re go­ing to let you stay here, and your kids are cit­izens,” he says. “Let’s get on with it.” He washes this some­what con­cili­at­ory po­s­i­tion down with hard-line rhet­or­ic more fa­mil­i­ar to the talk-ra­dio cir­cuit: “We ought to build one frig­gin’ big wall,” he says. “A big fence, tall, broad, double-sided, with a gate.” At the same time, He­witt is also agit­at­ing for an all-Span­ish-lan­guage de­bate between Marco Ru­bio and Bush at the West­ern Con­ser­vat­ive Sum­mit this com­ing June. “It would be a cul­ture-bend­ing event,” He­witt tells me ex­citedly, “and people would watch it even if they didn’t un­der­stand a word of it.”

He treads a sim­il­ar line on gay mar­riage. He op­poses it—”mar­riage between a man and wo­man is or­dained by God for the hap­pi­ness of hu­man­kind,” he wrote in 2012—but also avoids notes of hate­ful in­vect­ive. “This is not to say that single par­ents, or same-sex couples can­not be ter­rif­ic par­ents,” he went on. “They can be, of­ten far bet­ter at it than mar­ried couples who are ter­rible, hor­rible par­ents from whose ‘care’ chil­dren must be re­moved.”

More than any­thing else, though, He­witt is a for­eign policy hawk. He didn’t serve in the armed forces, but he mar­ried in­to a mil­it­ary fam­ily, ty­ing the knot with his wife, whom he al­ways calls “the fetch­ing Mrs. He­witt” on air, in the chapel at Camp Pendleton, the Mar­ine Corps base. “I’d take Re­agan’s for­eign policy 100 per­cent straight line,” He­witt says. “Peace through strength. Give me a 600-ship Navy, spend 5 per­cent of GDP on a na­tion­al de­fense, wheth­er you need it or not, be­cause you al­ways need it.” He sum­mar­izes his philo­sophy this way: “Have more of everything than any­one, and no one will mess around with you.”

This fall, he will likely quiz the GOP can­did­ates on na­tion­al-de­fense is­sues. “I am a na­tion­al se­cur­ity guy, first and fore­most,” he says. When Bush was on his show, He­witt pressed him about the size of Amer­ica’s sub­mar­ine fleet. Bush dodged, say­ing, “To be hon­est with you, I can’t give you an in­formed an­swer to that.” He and the rest of the GOP field would be smart to pre­pare for a fol­low-up, along with an opin­ion on ex­actly how many air­craft car­ri­ers the United States needs. “I ex­pect our pres­id­ents to know about Navy strength,” He­witt says. “I don’t know that any of them do.”

What’s not likely to be on He­witt’s de­bate dock­et are ques­tions about can­did­ates’ re­li­gious views. He is a de­vout “Evan­gel­ic­al Ro­man Cath­ol­ic Pres­by­teri­an” and a so­cial con­ser­vat­ive, but he has spe­cific­ally ruled out ques­tions about evol­u­tion, for in­stance. “I don’t be­lieve in ask­ing about per­son­al be­lief. It’s so an­ti­thet­ic­al to the found­ing. We’re not sup­posed to do that,” he told Bloomberg re­cently. And he has cri­ti­cized ABC’s George Stephan­o­poulos for his 2012 de­bate ques­tion about states ban­ning con­tra­cep­tion. In oth­er words, so­cial is­sues are out, and se­cur­ity is in—just the way the GOP elites want it.

HE­WITT’S RE­LA­TION­SHIP with the main­stream me­dia is com­plic­ated. While he views the main­stream press as clearly biased to­ward the Left, he also uses it to ag­gress­ively pro­mote his own show. “As soon as you’re done with the in­ter­view, I tell [my pro­du­cers], push this out—that’s the news, and that will at­tract the at­ten­tion to the full in­ter­view,” He­witt says. He reg­u­larly pro­duces tran­scripts of his Q&As. “There’s a dearth of sub­stant­ive tran­script in au­dio,” he says. “I’m feed­ing your need.” (Limbaugh sim­il­arly puts out tran­scripts, though of­ten they’re just of him talk­ing.) But even as He­witt re­lies on the es­tab­lish­ment press to amp­li­fy his con­ver­sa­tions, he also ex­plains that he puts out full tran­scripts be­cause “you don’t want the me­dia to fil­ter for you what [the guest] said.”

His en­coun­ters with in­di­vidu­al re­port­ers from the main­stream me­dia and the world of lib­er­al pun­ditry can be com­plic­ated, as well. In 1990, when He­witt was ex­ec­ut­ive dir­ect­or for the soon-to-be launched Nix­on Pres­id­en­tial Lib­rary and Mu­seum, he got in­to hot wa­ter for telling a Los Angeles Times re­port­er, “I don’t think we’d ever open the doors to Bob Wood­ward. He’s not a re­spons­ible journ­al­ist.” Today, He­witt says it was simply a “throwaway line.” The idea of screen­ing re­search­ers was quickly scrapped. He­witt sighs, “It will be in my ob­it­u­ary.” (He has had it in for the Times—where I used to work—for years. One of the last things he said to me be­fore I de­par­ted the Ritz was, “For an L.A. Times alum, they didn’t ru­in you.”)

He­witt fre­quently brings lib­er­al and main­stream journ­al­ists on his show. Some­times, these en­coun­ters go poorly. In one clas­sic case, from 2006, He­witt and the late White House cor­res­pond­ent Helen Thomas were spar­ring about journ­al­ist­ic cre­den­tials when she blur­ted out, “God knows what you are.” More re­cently, both Bill O’Re­illy of Fox News and Dav­id Corn of Moth­er Jones came on (sep­ar­ately) to speak about Corn’s piece dis­put­ing O’Re­illy’s claim to have been in a “war zone” in the early 1980s. The Corn in­ter­view was hos­tile from the start and ended with a hang-up more than 40 minutes in.

Yet of­ten He­witt’s in­ter­views with non­con­ser­vat­ives are re­spect­ful and genu­inely en­ga­ging. The late Chris­toph­er Hitchens was a re­cur­ring guest and oc­ca­sion­ally would ap­pear for the full three hours, as he did in 2010 to dis­cuss his auto­bi­o­graphy. Colum­nist E.”ŠJ. Di­onne has made mul­tiple ap­pear­ances (“my fa­vor­ite lefty,” He­witt has called him), as has Jonath­an Al­ter (“one of my lefty ra­dio pals”). In­tro­du­cing Al­ter dur­ing a 2013 in­ter­view, He­witt de­clared, “My team needs to read the oth­er team’s play­book, and Jonath­an has it.” These days, al­most every Fri­day, he has on Meet the Press host Chuck Todd. And un­like many con­ser­vat­ives from out­side Wash­ing­ton, he doesn’t act­ively des­pise Belt­way cul­ture. He says, “I love green rooms,” and notes that Mark Leibovich “has been on the show a lot.” (In­deed, He­witt had Leibovich on for the full three hours when his book on life in Wash­ing­ton, This Town, came out.)

He­witt’s ap­proach to deal­ing with the main­stream press is, es­sen­tially, eager and wary at the same time. And so, when journ­al­ists ask to pro­file him, his typ­ic­al re­sponse is the same one he gave me: He’ll talk to them, but first they need to come on his show. “It’s a screen­ing device,” He­witt tells me. “It is a test about good in­ten­tion. If someone is writ­ing a genu­ine pro­file—I’m not that in­ter­est­ing, I’ve been pro­filed a lot—but if they won’t come on first, I think that they have an agenda that they’re hid­ing. And a lot of people turn me down.”

In 2005, when he was ap­proached about a pro­file by The New York­er‘s Nich­olas Lemann, He­witt agreed to co­oper­ate only if Lemann would par­ti­cip­ate in a He­witt-writ­ten pro­file of Lemann. (“Mu­tu­al-as­sured de­struc­tion,” He­witt jokes now.) He­witt would later trail Lemann for two days around Columbia Uni­versity’s gradu­ate school of journ­al­ism—”the highest temple of a re­li­gion in de­cline,” as He­witt would de­scribe it in the pages of The Weekly Stand­ard—where Lemann was the new dean. The piece ended up be­ing less about Lemann and more about, in He­witt’s words, “the col­lapse of cred­ib­il­ity of the main­stream me­dia.” It doesn’t get much more meta than He­witt pro­du­cing a piece for a con­ser­vat­ive magazine about the de­cline of ob­ject­ive journ­al­ism, which cen­ters on a non­par­tis­an journ­al­ist who is in the midst of pro­fil­ing him for a main­stream magazine.

THE DAY HE­WITT broke the news that Rom­ney wasn’t go­ing to run for pres­id­ent, he hadn’t ex­actly been burn­ing up the phones to score the ex­clus­ive. A Rom­ney con­fid­ant—”a close source to the gov­ernor’s fam­ily,” He­witt says—had come to him, per­haps know­ing He­witt had cham­pioned Rom­ney be­fore, per­haps re­mem­ber­ing He­witt’s flat­ter­ing 2007 book (A Mor­mon in the White House? 10 Things Every Amer­ic­an Should Know About Mitt Rom­ney), or per­haps re­call­ing a Politico Magazine piece on Rom­ney he cowrote last year titled, “Third Time’s the Charm.”

“It was a give,” He­witt says of how he ob­tained Rom­ney’s pre­pared re­marks. “I think the in­ten­tion was to make sure that his state­ment was fully put in one place.” He pos­ted the tran­script in its en­tirety at hugh­he­witt.com, and it zoomed to the top of the Drudge Re­port while gar­ner­ing an ava­lanche of links from Twit­ter, Face­book, and across the Web.

From the 2012 Re­pub­lic­an nom­in­ee (Rom­ney) to the front-run­ner in 2016 (Bush), every­one in the GOP elite, it seems, is a fan of Hugh He­witt right now. Priebus, the RNC chair­man, is no ex­cep­tion. When I flagged him down in the halls of the Con­ser­vat­ive Polit­ic­al Ac­tion Con­fer­ence to ask about He­witt’s grow­ing in­flu­ence, he stopped and ges­tured to a man stand­ing with him. “This is his son!” he ex­claimed. It turns out James He­witt is an RNC deputy press sec­ret­ary, as­sist­ing the party with out­reach to right-lean­ing me­dia out­lets. As for the eld­er He­witt, Priebus wasn’t stingy with his praise. “He’s a star on talk ra­dio and a star in the con­ser­vat­ive me­dia circles and someone who I think is reas­on­able but tough,” he told me. “And I think he’s very well re­spec­ted no mat­ter where you fit in in our party.”

"Chuck Rosenberg, the acting head of the Drug Enforcement Agency who has found himself and his agency at odds with the Trump administration in recent months, told staff members Tuesday that he is planning to step down from his post." The Obama administration holdover will step down on October 1.

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HAD BEGUN TO PUBLICLY CRITICIZE TRUMP

Sen. Corker to Retire

1 hours ago

THE DETAILS

Another Republican member of Congress is showing himself out the door. After much thought, consideration and family discussion over the past year, Elizabeth and I have decided that I will leave the United States Senate when my term expires at the end of 2018,” said Sen. Bob Corker in a statement. The Tennessean has served since 2006.

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NOT ILLEGAL, BUT MUST BE FORWARDED TO WORK ACCOUNTS

At Least 6 WH Advisors Used Private Email Accounts

2 hours ago

THE LATEST

Jared Kushner, Stephen Bannon, Reince Priebus, Gary Cohn, Stephen Miller, and Ivanka Trump sent or received some emails on personal accounts that related to White House business. "Officials are supposed to use government emails for their official duties so their conversations are available to the public and those conducting oversight. But it is not illegal for White House officials to use private email accounts as long as they forward work-related messages to their work accounts so they can be preserved."

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SAYS CONTACTS WERE “BENIGN”

Stone Releases Correspondence with Guccifer 2.0

2 hours ago

THE LATEST

"Roger Stone, a longtime friend and adviser to Donald Trump, released correspondence Tuesday" with the online hacker known as Guccifer 2.0 , which "U.S. intelligence agencies said was used by Russian government-linked entities to distribute embarrassing information about Democrats during the 2016 election. The disclosures came in a 47-page opening statement made available to reporters in advance of Mr. Stone’s Tuesday appearance in front of the House Intelligence Committee." Stone called his contacts with Guccifer "limited" and "benign."

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PRIEBUS, SPICER, HICKS, MCGAHAN

Mueller Could Start Interviewing White House Figures This Week

2 hours ago

THE LATEST

"Special counsel investigators could start interviewing current and former White House staff as soon as later this week regarding the Russian probe, two sources familiar with the matter tell CNN. One source cautioned it is still being worked out with Robert Mueller's office and said it might be delayed until next week." Among those who could have a sit-down with the special prosecutor: former chief of staff Reince Priebus, former press secretary Sean Spicer, communications director Hope Hicks, White House counsel Don McGahn, communications adviser Josh Raffel and associate counsel James Burnham.